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Exclusive: Rahil Prakash tells the Guardian: ‘I wanted to see if fake polls could penetrate the ecosystem that easily’

A 21-year-old recent college graduate was behind an anonymous website that put out widely shared fake election polling in Wisconsin, Nevada and California, the Guardian can reveal.

The website, Median Strategies, abruptly shut down and withdrew its polling earlier this week following questions from a reporter from the Los Angeles Times. In an unsigned statement, it described a “short-term social experiment” to examine how fake polling “could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification”.

Supreme court ordered transfer of ex-leader whose health is reportedly deteriorating, but he was returned to prison several hours later

Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister Imran Khan was briefly taken to a hospital in the country’s capital on supreme court orders after weeks of uproar about his deteriorating health.

Khan, 73, was transferred to the hospital in the early hours of Friday, but then moved back to Adiala prison in Rawalpindi after a ⁠few hours, a spokesperson for his party said on Friday.

Недавно на Хабре вышла статья «почему 90% проектов на 1С теряют смысл» о том, что внедрение системы ≠ автоматизация бизнеса, которая больно бьёт по самому больному месту российского рынка автоматизации: клиенты, обращающиеся за автоматизацией, на самом деле хотят изменить бизнес — а работа большинства 1С-франчайзи заключается в том, чтобы менять систему — была УПП, стала ERP, а в процессах ничего не изменилось. Это происходит из-за того, что где-то по дороге бизнесовая задача внедрения подменяется технической — и подмена эта остаётся незамеченной, напоминая классический монолог Аркадия Райкина про пиджак:

— К пуговицам претензии есть?
— Нет. Пришиты насмерть, не оторвёшь!

«Перейти со старой системы на новую», «нам нужен Честный знак», «старая версия снимается с поддержки» — вот типичные формулировки, под которыми скрывается пустая трата десятков миллионов рублей. По частям, вроде, всё чётко, а в итоге — теряется 90% смысла автоматизации.

Exclusive: Rahil Prakash tells the Guardian: ‘I wanted to see if fake polls could penetrate the ecosystem that easily’

A 21-year-old recent college graduate was behind an anonymous website that put out widely shared fake election polling in Wisconsin, Nevada and California, the Guardian can reveal.

The website, Median Strategies, abruptly shut down and withdrew its polling earlier this week following questions from a reporter from the Los Angeles Times. In an unsigned statement, it described a “short-term social experiment” to examine how fake polling “could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification”.

Brazilian legend pledges excitement at his unveiling for a comeback that is winning over initially disbelieving fans

It seemed like a joke, a hoax, when at 10pm on 19 June, Ravenna broke the news of Ronaldinho’s signing. The Brazilian, a former Ballon d’Or winner and one of the most recognisable figures in world football, had played his last official match in 2015 for Fluminense; a professional signing in Serie C at 46 years of age seemed unrealistic, to say the least. With football’s attention taken by the World Cup, the game was shocked by this bolt from the blue. For the most part, it remained in disbelief.

There was much discussion, in the city and around the world, about the real value of this operation, and we talked about it too, speaking with the mayor, the fans, and the president of Ravenna, Ignazio Cipriani, scion of the family known globally for Harry’s Bar, who is giving his city much more than a dream.

Courier network carried millions of dollars in cash to Lebanon on commercial flights, treasury department says

The US treasury department announced sanctions on Thursday against 10 people it says formed a courier network that smuggled hundreds of millions of dollars to Hezbollah by carrying cash onboard commercial flights between Iran, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon.

The office of foreign assets control (OFAC) said the network allowed Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group,to obtain foreign currency and dodge sanctions outside the formal banking system. The treasury department linked the operation to a scheme once associated with Behnam Shahriyari, a now-deceased finance official for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force.

With one semi-final in her last seven tournaments, the coming months will define the next stage of her career

Towards the end of a messy first set tie-break late on Wednesday, Aryna Sabalenka wildly sprayed another painfully nervous backhand before slamming her racket to the ground. As the racket connected with the acrylic floor, its vibration dampener detached from the strings and rolled off in the direction of the broadcast camera pit by the side of the court.

With the diminutive 20-year‑old Czech player Sara Bejlek leading Sabalenka 6-5 in the tie-break, this slapstick sequence forced play to pause while the Belarusian and a couple of volunteers comically searched for the missing vibration damper underneath the cameras until she gave up and retrieved a new one. A few minutes later, Sabalenka trailed by a set.

Courier network carried millions of dollars in cash to Lebanon on commercial flights, treasury department says

The US treasury department announced sanctions on Thursday against 10 people it says formed a courier network that smuggled hundreds of millions of dollars to Hezbollah by carrying cash onboard commercial flights between Iran, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon.

The office of foreign assets control (OFAC) said the network allowed Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group,to obtain foreign currency and dodge sanctions outside the formal banking system. The treasury department linked the operation to a scheme once associated with Behnam Shahriyari, a now-deceased finance official for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force.

José Mejía Hernandez, 45, who was hospitalized for his injuries, was then transferred to an ICE office and fitted with an ankle monitor

A man in Virginia was hospitalized with a brain injury and severe bruising all over his face after he was arrested by US immigration agents, according to his lawyers, who shared photos and medical records with the Guardian.

José Mejía Hernández, 45, was walking to a bus stop in Arlington on the morning of 11 August when two agents got out of an unmarked vehicle and started chasing him, according to one of his lawyers, Margaret Hellerstein. The man recalled being hit by some kind of stun gun, but did not remember what happened after that, only waking up hours later in the hospital, Hellerstein said.

On the court, the WNBA is thriving. After 30 years, its players are receiving a historic payout, along with a massive TV distribution deal that will mean more games, and hopefully even more fans. But off the court, all that attention has some downsides. Most recently, it means that the culture war has come for the WNBA.

Specifically, the league has found itself at the center of a debate over transgender athletes and women’s sports, one that Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham ignited last month. 

Cunningham, 30, has gained a reputation as an “enforcer” for her All-Star teammate, Caitlin Clark. In July, she told ESPN that “I think that I am here to extend love, but I also think that with love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”

No known trans athletes have ever played in the WNBA, but that hasn’t much deterred pundits from weighing in. It’s the latest instance of the WNBA playing a central role in conversations about race and gender — even as most of the outrage is happening outside the court, while players and coaches would rather focus on basketball.

To get a better sense of what’s going on in the league — and why — Today, Explained co-host Noel King spoke with Ringer staff writer Seerat Sohi, who covers the NBA, WNBA, and women’s college basketball, about why the WNBA can’t seem to escape the culture wars.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

What is it about the WNBA ?

The WNBA is a league that invites, frankly, a lot of distraction, both because of its own institutional failures — I do think the WNBA really struggles at telling its own story and has at times run away from its own story — but I think in general, the WNBA has become fertile ground for the culture wars, as we put them, because the league has exploded in popularity at the same moment in the country where we are embroiled in this cultural, political, legal fight over what the role of women is in society. 

Let’s break this down to the two pieces you mentioned. You referenced institutional failures. What do you mean? 

The WNBA, from the top down, has been understaffed, and it has historically been marketed in a way that is obsessed with trying to bring in some apocryphal average American, the nuclear family. And at the same time, this has been a league that has been defined by people who have historically existed on the margins. They are female athletes at a time when historically female athletes were not paid much attention to, and in fact were mocked.

It’s the league that is primarily Black, that is openly queer, that is politically outspoken. And the league has always tried to toe the line of marketing the faces that feel more like a girl-next-door type of vibe.

To the point that early on, we can look at, for example, Sue Bird, who, when she entered the league [in 2002], was encouraged to not come out. 

And if you look back at pictures of her, she is dressed in a way that not only is it feminine, but it is also not the issue. The issue is that she’s very clearly uncomfortable in her own skin. Diana Taurasi, whose jersey was just retired — if you look back at her awards, it’s the same thing. 

Fast-forward to 2026, these are queer icons who are highly marketable in the media environment that we are in right now, but the WNBA has always been behind the eight ball in that regard because it has run away from its identity.

So by institutional failures, what we mean is maybe a lack of bravery or a lack of spine. You also said this exploded because the WNBA is of great interest at this moment to right-wing figures. What do you mean by that?

The right cares about the WNBA in the same way that it cares about who becomes a Disney princess. It understands the power of a good story. It understands symbolism. To see women on that stage thriving, to see them sweaty, to see them wanting, to see them be the main character instead of the object of somebody else’s affection or interest, to see them be the subject and be the ones that are going for something as opposed to being on the sidelines. 

That in and of itself alone is very, very powerful. And then you think about where the WNBA is politically. This has always been a league that has been very outspoken. This is a league that in 2020 helped flip a Georgia Senate election and actually ousted their then-owner of the Atlanta Dream who spoke out against the Black Lives Matter movement. 

I always understood the WNBA to have a smaller fan base. But the situation with Sophie Cunningham has made me realize it is much larger and much more middle-of-the-road than I would have thought. Did something change recently? Did the fan base of the WNBA grow? 

[Indiana Fever All-Star] Caitlin Clark was an explosive figure. Caitlin Clark was really a gateway drug for WNBA fans. The sheer amount of eyeballs that she has brought to the game, the attention, her logo threes. She is the type of player that makes children out of all of us. And then there’s also this right-wing movement that has latched onto her as a symbol. 

Why is that? For someone who doesn’t watch many games, what’s going on? 

Caitlin is white and straight. That is a demographic that I guess you could say is maybe underrepresented in the WNBA. And there was a feeling when she came into the league that she wasn’t welcomed in the same way that maybe other stars in the past have been. There was a sense that maybe there was some resentment. 

Now, I don’t know if that’s true. I would imagine, look, these are human beings that we’re talking about. There was probably a spectrum of feelings when you think about it. This was a league that didn’t have charter flights. Caitlin Clark comes in, they get charter flights. 

Now, obviously that’s great for the players, but I also think that there was a feeling of, “Oh wait, the WNBA could have done these things that we’ve been advocating for for a long time. Now they’re finally listening because Caitlin is here.”

She is, ironically, an organic phenomenon that is bringing to light the manufactured failures of the WNBA in the past. 

Caitlin Clark goes to the WNBA. The WNBA grows its fan base to include people who traditionally were not watching. And then what is the leap from that fact? More people at games, more eyeballs on games. More eyeballs on players, to a conservative movement seizes upon the WNBA and says, “We’re gonna make something out of this.” How did you see that play out? 

It started with the 2023 college national title game, when Caitlin was still in college. And she went up against Angel Reese from LSU. LSU won that game. And after the game, Angel Reese did the “You can’t see me” taunt by John Cena, and it was actually something that Caitlin did [previously] in the Elite Eight. It was taken as trash talk. Angel then repeated that symbol to Caitlin after they won and pointed at her ring.

In the aftermath of that, Angel Reese was called all kinds of things by not only conservative commentators — a lot of this was conservative commentators, but you also had people like Keith Olbermann, who’s a former SportsCenter anchor and probably somebody who’s a little bit more in the middle of the road, calling her classless.

I think a lot of the WNBA fans took those things to be dog whistles, that it was a form of racism. And there was also just overt racism. There were just words that you and I would not say and would not repeat here that were thrown at Angel Reese, who has also dealt with a lot of vitriol since that moment. 

That moment changed both of their lives, frankly. And that was really the inciting incident. From then on, I think that there were a lot of people in the new media landscape that recognized that the WNBA was a fault line for a lot of our modern discourse in America. 

It is a league that you can use as a proxy to talk about race, gender fluidity, femininity, DEI, labor politics. It is probably the most modern American league that we have.

And if you look back at the history of sports, I think Americans have always used sports as a proxy to talk about things that aren’t actually about the sport. And the WNBA is really just the latest vessel of that.

Мы рассмотрим новый фреймворк Areg SDK, идея которого, по моему мнению, может задать новый стандарт в распределенных системах. От идеи микросервисов, где компонент общается с другими компонентами мы выходим на уровень выше — структуры бесшовно общаются со структурами на других потоках и хостах в эталонной синхронизации.

Какой подход выбрали коллеги и причем тут бог Солнца? Давайте выясним.

Разработчик понимает, что не успевает, но молчит до последнего. Сильный специалист не делегирует, потому что другим не доверяет. Тимлид видит, что проблема выходит за пределы команды, но боится сообщить наверх.

Психологический процесс начинает влиять на работу раньше, чем появляется событие, которое мы уже называем проблемой. Разбираю, как замечать такие сценарии раньше — и почему профилактика начинается не только с сотрудника, но и с безопасной среды внутри команды.